Can't Boot To HD & Can't Access Boot Options

[felixhj]

Hello,
Firstly - I completely understand that this is a situation I have brought upon myself and so have accepted that this may be the end for my laptop. However I would be incredibly grateful if anyone has any ideas.

Macbook A1342 (Mid 2010) running Yosemite. Felt the computer wasn't handling Yosemite very well so backed everything up and decided to do a reinstall of Leopard from original DVDs. Inserted install disc, couldn't reinstall normally (by double clicking on icon) so tried booting from disc - no luck. Tried to force boot from disc by changing boot arguments in terminal (yes stupid to play around with I know). Changed the boot argument to boot from disk1s3 which was listed as the install disc. Restarted and no luck, booting status bar taking a long time to move (10mins to reach half way) so used left mouse button and boot to eject disc.

When I boot now I get a prohibitory sign (I assume as it can't find the disc I'm pointing it to) but I also can't access any of the boot options such as boot manager, recovery partition, internet recovery. Single user mode also does not work.

Most importantly, I can't reset NVRAM by using the Alt + Apple + P + R.

What's the verdict, is it dead or is there something else I can try?

 

[Fishrrman]

A mid-2010 Macbook or MacBook Pro still "has a lot of life in it".

My suggestion:
Now is a good time to think about installing an SSD. You can get them as cheap as $40 now (120gb) or less than $100 for a 240gb.
You will LIKE the performance improvements.

I also suggest that you get an external USB3 enclosure (can put the old drive into it after the swap), and use that to "prep and test" the SSD before you put it into the Macbook.

I would HIGHLY recommend OS 10.8.5 "Mountain Lion" as the "OS of choice" for that year MacBook.

Aside:
You can also use 10.6.8 "Snow Leopard" for even faster performance. Yes, I know it's dated, but it still runs pretty well.

 

[Weaselboy]

What's the verdict, is it dead or is there something else I can try?

You are going to need access to another Mac where you can download Yosemite then make a USB Installer key. Then option key boot to that and erase the disk and reinstall Yosemite. Yosemite will run fine on that machine. If it does not, perhaps you have something else going on like a software conflict or a hardware failure of some kind.

 

[felixhj]

Hi, thanks for your reply. So I have made a bootable external, and actually also have a recovery partition on the HD, my problem is that none of the boot options are working. I.e. when I press alt or apple + r or anything else, it just attempts to boot from the same (non existent) disc. Can't access the recovery, can't access boot manager. Is there any way to force this? Or physically reset my NVRAM without using boot keys? Thanks!

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi, thanks for your reply. So I have made a bootable external, and actually also have a recovery partition on the HD, my problem is that none of the boot options are working. I.e. when I press alt or apple + r or anything else, it just attempts to boot from the same (non existent) disc. Can't access the recovery, can't access boot manager. Is there any way to force this? Or physically reset my NVRAM without using boot keys? Thanks!

Have you verified the USB installer key is bootable on another machine? Even with those boot arguments, you should still be able to option key boot to that installer key.